Let the craziness continue

Published: Friday, September 27, 2013 at 01:39 PM.

I was trying the other day to remember what my first few years as a full-time reporter were like and that’s what I came up with first.

The mornings used to be . . . crazy.

Back then only the big city newspapers published for home delivery in the morning. All the little town publications — usually lumped into the happy-sounding category of “community newspapers” — cranked up the press for afternoon customers. In theory, publishers liked for the paper to be ready to sell just before the lunch crowd hit its peak.

That meant, of course, that editors, reporters and photographers stumbled into newsrooms bleary eyed from 6 to 7:30 a.m. They would quickly chug down some of the worst coffee most could ever imagine, then begin to work the phones or other sources of information to write and produce a newspaper in about four hours.

I was trying the other day to remember what my first few years as a full-time reporter were like and that’s what I came up with first.

The mornings used to be . . . crazy.

Back then only the big city newspapers published for home delivery in the morning. All the little town publications — usually lumped into the happy-sounding category of “community newspapers” — cranked up the press for afternoon customers. In theory, publishers liked for the paper to be ready to sell just before the lunch crowd hit its peak.

That meant, of course, that editors, reporters and photographers stumbled into newsrooms bleary eyed from 6 to 7:30 a.m. They would quickly chug down some of the worst coffee most could ever imagine, then begin to work the phones or other sources of information to write and produce a newspaper in about four hours.

Like I said, it was . . . crazy.

And it could be a lot of fun.

When I started at the Times-News in the fall of 1984 it wasn’t uncommon for the four-person sports staff to take 30 or more phone calls from coaches or someone reporting results and stats from one game or another in a three-hour window of time. The information would be typed up for stories with box scores. Meanwhile, we were also selecting photos, editing or writing other stories and designing pages.

Looking back, I’m not sure how we did it. There wasn’t much time to even breathe.

On the news side, it was pretty normal for now retired reporter Jim Wicker to produce three stories or even more during this window of time. Jack Sink might get a photo or two or three. The desk editors then had to organize and shape it into a newspaper, lickety-split.

When all was said and done — sometimes in a loud and profane manner — we would take a collective deep breath and wander downtown for lunch and a daily dose of grease.

Like I said, those four hours on Monday through Friday were intense, crazy, maddening, frustrating, agitating, exhilarating and in many ways I missed it desperately after moving to a morning newspaper in 1992. There the day began leisurely with a cup of coffee, perhaps a doughnut or sausage biscuit. We killed time in the morning talking about things that happened overnight in politics, what was on TV or how late the Monday night football game ran. Editors settled in for an entire day of planning the front and local pages. Long meetings and meandering ideas replaced short exchanges over cigarettes. News pages, for the most part, were assembled by a night shift, who did the job over an eight-hour period instead of just two or three.

Breathing was still optional, but at least there was time to consider it.

Sports, of course, remains a deadline survival test where dozens of things are juggled over a relatively short amount of time, but for everyone else, it got a lot easier.

When afternoon newspapers died in the mid-1990s, there was nothing else quite like it for adrenaline junkies like me.

Then, of course, the Internet came along.

Websites providing news kicked up the competition to provide information to people as quickly as possible. For newspapers, it was like a universal shift in time management. People who used to work on afternoon newspapers understood it immediately. Stories had to be done ASAP rather than postponed, shaped or groomed for cultivation as the day expires. No time could be spared.

In 2007 we started to get a handle on providing local stories more quickly online for www.thetimesnews.com. We stopped holding things up until midnight and began posting breaking news and obituaries throughout the day. As we move to more of a 24-hour news cycle, our web efforts remain a work in progress.

We take another step in that evolution this week. On Tuesday, we start a new digital subscription program. People who subscribe to the print Times-News can access things on www.thetimesnews.com at no extra cost. That includes our replica edition and mobile apps. Web-only readers, who up to now have accessed our main page and most stories at no cost, will be required to purchase a digital-only subscription for $9.95 a month to continue. The digital subscription includes everything on our site, including the replica edition.

We know some digital customers will howl. After all, the content has been free for a decade or more. But I think most were aware that this day would arrive at some point. After all, neighboring newspapers in Raleigh and Greensboro are already doing it. It costs money to generate content. We have to pay bills, too.

But it’s also an opportunity for the newsroom to again shift gears in terms of providing content. We’ll redouble our efforts to get news out faster to an audience of information junkies who ravenously consume facts and then issue comments throughout the day.

I expect our work to become more challenging and frustrating. But it’ll be fun, too.

And no doubt, it’ll be a little crazy.

Madison Taylor is editor of the Times-News. Contact him at mtaylor@thetimesnews.com